Why you shouldn’t eat your boogers
October 1st, 2008 Dennis - Central
I usually have a pretty tough time coming up with a catchy title for these book reviews.
Not this time.
The publishers of Why you Shouldn’t Eat Your Boogers and Other Useless or Gross Information About Your Body took care of that problem. They know what sells. Or at least what sells here in America. The book was originally published in the United Kingdom under the yawn inducing title Why is yawning contagious? The newer title has a much higher sales rank on amazon.com. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
So, it’s somewhat more popular with the new title. But while parts of it are amusing, it’s not particularly useful in any practical sense. Set up in a question and answer format, the answers are more anecdotal than research quality. And that quote on the front cover referring to “Over 200 superfluous factoids about your body?” Believe it. The author, Francesca Gould, doesn’t use the title of doctor at the beginning of her name, nor does she use PhD. at the end. And the book doesn’t contain any references or footnotes. Not even an index. It reads more like something published by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! than something published by the American Medical Association.
Not that that’s necessarily bad, of course. True, it deals with human anatomy and physiology, but its focus is entertainment, not science. Or at least not enough science to build a term paper around. But there’s plenty here that will amuse (if you don’t mind the repugnant bits). And the entries are short enough to not waste a whole lot of your time.
But for real life answers to some of these questions–see your doctor. Or read more books.
Entry Filed under: Nonfiction
2 Comments Add your own
1. alex | December 1st, 2008 at 11:57 am
i love thiss book alot i read it over the summer and it reallly kept me entertained.i learned alot of things i never wouold have thought of asking.itw as very educational and i even used some of the facts i learned in school.i likeed leraring about the funny things in this book.my favorite question was probably why you shouldnt eat you r boogers,ha.i would deffinetly reccomend this book to other kids.
2. Dennis | December 8th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Hi Alex,
I’m glad you enjoyed the book. I thought it was pretty entertaining in parts too. I’d be a little cautious about using it as a resource for school however. If you find some of the ideas intriguing, please look for alternative works to back up the information before you present any theories found in the book in a science class.
For instance, there’s a question about Cryonics in the book that presents the information as if it were a well established science, while the reality is that no humans have yet been frozen at death and then revived.
But, like you said, there are lots of things presented in the book that I never would have thought of asking either.
Dennis
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